# Ruff 115 Hacker News commenters recommended Ruff and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A very fast Python linter and formatter that replaces flake8, black and similar tools and keeps AI coding agents honest; critics say new default rules cause upgrade churn. ## Why people recommend it - Extremely fast (5 comments): "It's also truly really fast. On an as-yet un-ruff'ed 32k SLOC python package it returns in 158ms finding 2k errors." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49058443)) "uv and ruff took over because they were in many ways simpler and much faster than the competition" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220101)) "Both were better in terms of user ergonomics and also much faster that what we used before" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686558)) - Replaces many older Python tools (5 comments): "replacing a mountain of tools and rules with a single extremely fast linter/formatter" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300202)) "Stop using flake8 and use ruff instead. It's made by the same folks that make uv." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46401010)) "Similar to black but faster, written in Rust, by the same team who created uv." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49262978)) - Keeps AI coding agents honest (5 comments): "with that combination, has roughly the same agent ergonomics as Go and lower token count due to higher abstraction level" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828804)) "I see a lot less waste of tokens and reasoning retry loops of obvious errors when using Python with uv+ruff" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256198)) "Python has uv, ruff and Pyrefly, and with that combination, has roughly the same agent ergonomics as Go" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828986)) - Strict defaults catch real issues (4 comments): "enabling 413 rules by default means most projects get useful linting without touching the config at all" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056543)) "can yell at you for having a TODO without an associated link to a ticket, which I greatly appreciate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860792)) "the new rules do improve code quality. It caught quite a few things previous versions didn't." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057133)) ## What people warn about - New default rules force churn (5 comments): "You will probably have to do it all over again when these guys release even newer and shinier 0.17.0, with even more rules." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061379)) "every version introducing a bunch of new default rules which you then have to deal with immediately" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49058869)) "I've got only 2900 errors -- which weren't errors at all just yesterday" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49081177)) - Many rules noisy or pointless (3 comments): "getting overrun with "413 x potential warnings" hardly sounds useful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056618)) "most of the rules are nonsense and the number of rules that makes no sense is growing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065551)) "the bot force worse linting decisions, and even pushes towards more bugs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49059119)) - OpenAI acquisition prompts migration (2 comments): "I will start migrating from uv, ty and ruff first thing this weekend" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444345)) "this news is good enough reason to move from Ruff back to black" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450743)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Clippy (Rust linter)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/clippy.md): 58 recommend - [ESLint](https://hackerapproved.com/p/eslint.md): 32 recommend - [Biome](https://hackerapproved.com/p/biome.md): 23 recommend - [Oxlint](https://hackerapproved.com/p/oxlint.md): 20 recommend - [ShellCheck](https://hackerapproved.com/p/shellcheck.md): 19 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Ruff", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ruff/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).